| Lazybones |
Working on the lake battle scene in Foundations of Flame, and I thought I'd get some feedback from folks who ran it.
The encounter with the Morkoth at the lake... according to the module, the players should be 15th level at this point. I don't see how any party can survive this encounter. Remember the morkoth has Int18, so good tactics from it are to be expected. It has 8-9 rounds before it has to worry about returning to the lake for a breath. Its reflective SR means that most magical attacks will return to the caster (even a pure caster @15th level [without Spell Penetration] will only have a 25% chance of affecting it). Arrows can hurt it, but mostly I was thinking of an infallible tactic from it that should devastate any 15th level party. The mod says it summons the vrocks first, but then all it has to do is swoop down to the party, and unleash a blasphemy. With 21HD, everyone in the party (assuming they're all non-evil, as my group is) will be paralyzed for 1d10 minutes WITH NO SAVE. Any cohorts, companions etc. with <=11HD will be killed outright. With all its foes paralyzed, it can CDG them at its leisure while the vrocks watch.
The only thing I can think of is the party spreading out (although the spell has an 80' diameter) enough to avoid all being hit by the blasphemy. But if any flying heroes rise to meet it before it attacks, it can just unleash the spell and watch as its enemies plummet into the lake, and most likely burn to death before they drown.
Please find a hole in this approach; I don't want to bring in a deus ex machina to save the party but I don't see how a 15th level group can survive this encounter.